The Best Things I Never Wrote: Quote of the Day, #5

Marcus Berkmann on books of quotations …

“Surely no one buys a book of quotations when sober.”

Marcus Berkmann in The Spectator www.spectator.co.uk, Dec. 16-23, 2006. This comment appeared a dual review of The Yale Book of Quotations (Yale, 2006), edited by Fred R. Shapiro, and The Times Quotations (Collins, 2006), edited by Philip Howard.

Comment by Janice Harayda:

I don’t agree with this, and we aren’t supposed to agree. Berkmann is writing with tongue-in-cheek here. I’m posting his comment because it suggests a difference betwen British and American book reviews. British critics take more risks, write in a more conversational tone, and give their readers more credit for having a sense of humor than their American counterparts do. Berkmann made this comment in The Spectactor, a conservative weekly. Can you imagine a liberal publication like The New York Times Book Review publishing a remark like this? So which publication, we might ask, is more “conservative”?

One-Minute Book Reviews reflects, in part, my admiration for the British tradition of publishing reviews that are witty, spirited, and intelligent. I agree with the comment by Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair, that the main problem with American journalism isn’t that it is uninformative but that it is dull. And I try to offer an antidote on One-Minute Book Reviews by writing reviews that you will enjoy even when you disagree with them.

(c) 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Joan Ryan’s Exposé of Abuses in Gymnastics and Figure Skating

Aiming for the Olympics in a glamour sport can mean living with eating disorders, crippling injuries, and tyrannical coaches

Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters: Revised Edition. By Joan Ryan. Warner, 243 pp., varied prices.

By Janice Harayda

You think the steroids scandals in baseball are bad? Try reading this chilling exposé of the exploitation of America’s best young gymnasts and figure skaters, which grew out of an award-winning series that Joan Ryan wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle. Some of the abuses described in Little Girls in Pretty Boxes are worse than any in baseball because they affect athletes who are much younger and more vulnerable.

Many people have written about the dangers of Olympic-level gymnastics and figure skating, such as the high risk of eating disorders. But Little Girls in Pretty Boxes unique for its powerful documentation of the abuses, typically through heartbreaking stories of well-known athletes and the physical and emotional damage they suffered at the hands of parents, coaches, and federations that ignored the obvious dangers in their sports. Ryan spoke with former stars like skater Elaine Zayak and the Bela Karolyi–coached gymnast Kristie Phillips about the lasting pain of their exploitation in their peak competitive years. She also interviewed the mother of Julissa Gomez, who died after breaking her neck on a practice vault at a meet in Tokyo.

First published a decade ago as a book for adults, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes has become a modern sports classic. It has also found a strong following among adolescent girls. It’s heartening to know that if adults don’t recognize all the dangers in glamour sports, this book may help young athletes spot them on their own.

Best line: “In staving off puberty to maintain the ‘ideal’ body shape, girls risk their health in ways their male counterparts never do. They starve themselves, for one, often in response to their coaches belittling insults about their bodies. Starving the body shuts down the menstrual cycle – the starving body knows it cannot support a fetus — and thus blocks the onset of puberty. It’s a dangerous strategy to save a career [in gymnastics or figure skating]. If a girl isn’t menstruating, she isn’t producing estrogen. Without estrogen, her bones weaken. She risks stunting her growth. She risks premature osteoporosis. She risks fractures in all bones, including her vertebrae, and she risks curvature of the spine. In several studies over the last decade, young female athletes who didn’t menstruate were found to have the bone densities of postmenopausal women in their 50s, 60 and 70s.”

Worst line: This book appeared in a revised second edition in 2000, so the text doesn’t reflect rules changes that have occurred since then.

Recommended … to parents and coaches of young gymnasts, figure skaters, dancers, cheerleaders and others involved in sports that favor the young, thin, and pretty. Little Girls in Pretty Boxes may also appeal to many teenage girls and adults who like books such as Alex Kuczynski’s recent Beauty Junkies. It is easily one of the best books — maybe the best — on women’s sports of the past ten years.

Published: 1996 (first edition), 2000 (revised second edition).

Furthermore: This book was made into a 1997 movie. If the direct link at the end of this line doesn’t work, search for Little Girls in Pretty Boxes at  www.imdb.com. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119551/

© 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

The Delete Key Awards Are Coming … Beware the Ides of March!

Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15. The Delete Key Awards recognize authors are trying to assassinate the English language.

One-Minute Book Reviews is the home of the Delete Key Awards, which recognize the worst writing published in books in the preceding year.

In February Janice Harayda will announce the short list for the 2007 Delete Key Awards, which will go to authors who have written some of the worst lines of 2006. Visitors to One-Minute Book Reviews will have an opportunity to comment on the finalists, and the winner will be announced on March 15.

Please bookmark www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com or subscribe to the RSS feed to avoid missing announcements about these awards. To nominate your candidates for a Delete Key award, leave a comment on this site.

This is the first year that the Delete Key Awards are being given out, and many people don’t know about them. Please help to spread the word, if you can, by commenting on them on your blog or by forwarding this post or a link to this site to others, especially to literary bloggers and people in the media and publishing. Thank you!

(c) Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Stanley Alpert’s 25 Hours in Hell With a Turkey Sandwich

You think your last birthday was a bad?

The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival. By Stanley N. Alpert. Putnam’s, 306 pp., $24.95.

By Janice Harayda

January used to be the low season in publishing, a time when firms released titles that weren’t sexy enough to compete with gift or beach books. No more, and anybody who wants proof needs only to pick up The Birthday Party. To say that this terrific book tells the true story of a New York stick-up gone haywire is like saying that Psycho is about a motel with an eccentric owner.

On the night before his 38th birthday, Stanley Alpert was abducted on a Manhattan street by thugs who expected to release him after using his ATM card at a nearby machine. The kidnappers changed their plans after learning that Alpert, then a federal prosecutor, had $110,000 in a savings account. With a gang-that-couldn’t- shoot-straight ineptitude, they kept him blindfolded for 25 hours in their car and a Brooklyn tenement as they tried to figure out how to grab more of his cash.

Alpert tried to humanize himself with his captors by tactics such as joking and giving them legal advice. He told the ringleader, who couldn’t fathom why he was single: “You should talk to my parents. They’re wondering, too.” But he had his limits. He turned down marijuana, sex with a hooker who helped keep an eye on him, and food (which he was afraid was drugged) except for a turkey sandwich, Peach Snapple, an Welch’s grape juice. Alpert kept his cool partly by memorizing clues to his captors’ identities that he hoped would help to put them away if he survived. And his strategies brought savory rewards when law-enforcement officials began hunting for the crew after his release.

We have to take Alpert’s word for much of this. But most of the story rings true, although his captors at times use oddly formal expressions such as “cellular phone” and his account of his legal career makes him sound like the Batman of environmental law. Alpert has no answer for his own question: “So why did God decide to keep me alive?” But on the evidence of this book, you might conclude that God just likes good writers.

Best line: When Alpert was missing and feared dead, a friend theorized that his disappearance might involve his investigation of a polluter with possible mob ties. An FBI agent dismissed the idea, believing the Mafia wouldn’t get worked up over an environmental issue: “Technically, dumping the guy in concrete shoes in the East River was a Clean Water Act violation, but who cared?”

Worst line: Alpert uses the redundant “PIN number” at least three times. He also writes of an “ATM cash machine.”

Recommended if … you’re hungry for manna for true crime fans or liked Boss of Bosses: The FBI and Paul Castellano, the true story of the government’s effort to bring down the Gambino crime family.

Editor: Neil Nyren

Published: January 2007

Furthermore: A reading group guide to The Birthday Party was posted on Feb. 4 and is archived with the February posts and in the “Totally Unauthorized Reading Group Guides” category on this blog.

Links: Alpert has a good blog on Amazon.com that includes dates of his future appearances www.amazon.com.

(c) 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

The Best Things I Never Wrote: Quote of the Day, #4

Donald M. Murray on the importance of a writer’s voice …

“Voice allows the reader to hear an individual human being speak from the page. Good writing always has a strong and appropriate voice. Voice is the quality, more than any other, that allows us to recognize exceptional potential in a beginning writer; voice is the quality, more than any other, that allows us to recognize excellent writing. We respond to voice when we hear it. Voice gives the text individuality, energy, concern.

“Voice is, of course, closely allied to style or tone, but I prefer the term ‘voice’ for it seems more accurate and more helpful for the beginner. However we discuss style, it seems to get related to fashion. Style sounds like something you buy off the shelf. It is made by someone else and changes with the season. The term ‘style’ encourages the misconception that writing is inherently dishonest, that the writer has to say what someone else wants the writer to say in manner appropriate to someone else. But good writing is honest – honest in what is said and how it is said.”

Donald M. Murray in A Writer Teaches Writing: Revised Second Edition (Heinle, 2004). An appreciation of Murray, who died in December, was posted on this blog on January 1, 2007, and is archived with the posts for that month.

Julia Hansen Tries the World’s Most Bizarre Method of Quitting Smoking: Books I Didn’t Finish, #4

Can I bum a radiator and 72-foot chain from you?

Title: A Life in Smoke: A Memoir. By Julia Hansen. Free Press, 304 pp., $24.

What it is: The true story of a former editor for Playgirl who tried to quit smoking by shackling herself to a radiator with a 72-foot steel chain from Home Depot that enabled her to reach to her computer but not stores that sold cigarettes.

Where I stopped reading: I read the first and last chapters and skimmed about half of the rest.

Why I stopped: Hansen describes herself accurately as a “competent writer … but not a brilliant one.” David Sedaris might have been able to pull off chaining himself to a radiator for a week and writing about it. But Hansen wasn’t funny or perceptive to hold my interest (although, in addition to working for Playgirl, she’s edited health books). It didn’t help that her book had pages of cloying, italicized, present-tense passages that broke her momentum. Her technique also raised questions of motive: Did she really chain herself to a radiator because she thought it would be the best way to quit smoking … or because she thought it would be the best way to get a lot of attention for her book on YouTube and elsewhere?

Editor: Liz Stein

Caveat reader: These comments are based on the advance readers’ edition. Some material in the finished book may differ slightly.

Published: November 2006

© 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

The Best Things I Never Wrote: Quote of the Day, #3

Anatole Broyard on nostalgia in American literature …

“It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn’t wait to leave.”

Anatole Broyard in “Mulchpile to Megalopolis,” which appeared in Aroused by Books (New York: Random House, 1974), a collection of book reviews that originally appeared in the New York Times from 1971–1973 when he was a staff critic.

Comment by Janice Harayda:

Broyard wrote this before the boom in what Joyce Carol Oates has called “pathography,” or biography and autobiography that focus on the sordid. Do you think his comment is still true of some American writers? If so, whom?

Kate DiCamillo’s Allegory of Christian Faith and Resurrection

Did the crucifixion of a rabbit keep her from winning another Newbery Medal?

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. By Kate DiCamillo. Illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Candlewick, 200 pp., $18.99. Ages 7 and up.

By Janice Harayda

Edward Tulane spends “40 days and 40 nights” in a wilderness, is nailed to a cross, dies after a shared meal, and is resurrected and reunited with a parent figure. Sound like anybody you’ve heard of?

How about if I added that Edward is a rabbit, a symbol of Easter? And that he is loved by a girl named Maggie, which can be a nickname for Magdalene?

That’s right. Edward Tulane is a symbol of Christ, his story is a Passion narrative, and this novel is an allegory of Christian faith and resurrection.

If you’ve followed the publicity for The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, you may have heard denials of all this. So here are a couple of facts:

1) Anyone who has a financial stake in this novel may have to deny its religious motifs, even though the book includes a striking full-page picture of Edward’s crucifixion. DiCamillo won the Newbery Medal for The Tale of Despereaux, and the award helped to make her books among the most popular in American schools. The Christian imagery in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane may have cost DiCamillo this year’s Newbery Medal, which the American Library Assocation awarded Monday to The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron. A blunt acknowledgment that Edward is a Jesus figure might also keep the book off school reading lists.

2) The religious themes in the book do not appear once or twice or in ways that might have been accidental. They appear in the title, the artwork, and throughout the story. DiCamillo is too careful a writer to insert such motifs casually, which would violate the reader’s trust and well-established dramatic principles. At the end of this review are some lines that are identical or closely parallel to lines in the Bible. In DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie, the main character’s father was a preacher.

Children can enjoy The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane without understanding its religious themes just as adults can love Animal Farm without realizing that it is an allegory for Stalinism. But some children will sense that DiCamillo’s book has more than one level of meaning. To deny this could undermine their confidence in their ability to make intelligent, multi-layered judgments about books. All children benefit from learning to grasp a story on more than one level. DiCamillo has given them a chance to do this in a moving and suspenseful novel, beautifully illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. Children of any faith can enjoy its story. How unfortunate if the novel were kept out of schools because it might help them appreciate the many layers of meaning that a good book can have.

These are three of many passages in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane that have parallels in the Bible:

DiCamillo’s lines appear below in a Roman font. The parallel lines from the King James Version appear in bold.

Edward begins his journey by leaving “a house on Egypt Street” where he is in bondage to his inability to love. “Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage …” Exodus 13:13

Edward spends “40 days and 40 nights” in a garbage dump surrounded by rotting food. “… he had fasted for 40 days and 40 nights …” Matthew 4:2 Also: “I will cause it to rain upon the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.” Genesis 7:4

A shopkeeper tells Edward: “I brought you back from the world of the dead.” “… he rose from the dead.” Acts 10:34

Many names in the book also have religious connotations. They include those of three female characters: Abilene (once a region of the Holy Land), Natalie (which means “birth of the Lord”); and Maggie (often a nickname for Magdalene).

Published: February 2006

Furthermore: See the Feb. 10, 2007, post on this blog for a review of DiCamillo’s “Mercy Watson” series for beginning readers, or younger children than The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.

Links: www.edwardtulane.com and www.katedicamillo.com

© 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

One-Minute Book Reviews is an independent literary blog created by Janice Harayda, who has been a book columnist for Glamour, book editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, and a vice-president of the National Book Critics Circle. This site posts a new review of a book for children or teenagers every Saturday. To avoid missing these reviews, please bookmark www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com. Please visit www.janiceharayda.com for information about the author’s comic novels.

One of the Most Talked-About Children’s Books of the Year, ‘The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,’ Tomorrow on One-Minute Book Reviews

Kate DiCamillo’s The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane was one of the most talked about books of 2oo6. Janice Harayda reviews this novel for ages 7 and up tomorrow in the Saturday Children’s Corner on One-Minute Book Reviews. She will also look at DiCamillo’s “Mercy Watson” series for grades kindergarten through two.

Tom Brady, Interrupted: Books I Didn’t Finish, #3

Third in an occasional series of posts that explains why I didn’t finish certain books

Title: Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything. By Charles R. Pierce. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 256 pp., $23.

What it is: A portrait of the quarterback who led the New England Patriots to three Super Bowl victories, written by a member of the staff of The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.

Where I stopped reading: I read the first chapter and skimmed about half of the rest of the book.

Why I stopped: The Patriots lost the American Football Conference title, so no Super Bowl this year, and I was looking for a game tie-in. And while this book is better than many by or about football players, such as Brett Favre’s dismal autobiography, this is like saying that a restaurant has better food than Hooters. Moving the Chains has much less going for it than the best sports books of recent years, which include Seabiscuit, The Perfect Mile, and Little Girls in Pretty Boxes. Many quotes are filler. (“Quarterbacks,” the Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick informs us, “are going to get hit.”) Tom Brady comes across as a really nice, smart guy who’s a little dull off the field, a hazard of premature appreciations like this one.

Most bizarre line: Pierce reports that “the greatest college fight song of all” is the University of Michigan’s. Would somebody send this man a CD of “On Wisconsin” or the “Notre Dame Victory March” fast?

Furthermore: Despite my reservations, Moving the Chains may appeal to die-hards who can never read too many passages like this one about a drive in Pittsburgh in 2005: “It began with a deep out to David Givens on the left side for 14 yards. Then, Brady waited just long enough for Deion Branch to clear and hit him for eight more. A deep crossing route to Troy Brown got the Patriots into Pittsburgh territory at the 45-yard line, and then Brady hit Brown again for five more. The Patriots ran Corey Dillon up the middle, and then, with Brady in the shotgun, Dillon flattened a blitzing Steeler linebacker and gave Brady enough time to find Givens deep down the left side for 30 yards at the Pittsburgh 7. Dillon cracked over from there to give New England a 17–13 lead.”

Caveat reader: These comments are based on the advance readers’ edition. Some material in the finished book may differ slightly.

Published: October 2006

© 2007 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.